You know, I understand where conservatives come from, I understand that gay marriage is seen as wrong because it is a "religous" thing. And i see people like the Canadian conservative party leader, Stephen Harper saying that a conservative government would define marriage.

Alright then, lets define marriage.

Marriage: A union between a man and a women under the eyes of god. (roughly)

Now, look at that, see any problems there? I know I don't, it makes sense, it's the traditional definition.

But it gets me thinking, what is gay marriage? What is it defined? I know people talk about it alot and think they know what it is, but no one has come out and said, what is gay marriage?

This is how I see gay marriage defined, and so does most liberals and most people who want gay marriage. (I hope)

Gay marriage: A CIVIL union between a man and a man, or between a woman and a woman.

You see, most people in Canada, even CONSERVATIVES I know support civil unions as a plausible idea, because it gives gay people marriage, without worrying about traditional marriage. But most of them don't like it being called gay marriage because it looks like marriage. But if we define it, gay marriage isn't a religious thing. It's civil.

Actually most conservatives only other problem with gay marriage is the fact that the way it looks, the government would have to force churches to accept gay people, and allow them to get married in their church (what right minded individual would walk into a catholic church and demand to be married? Some yes, but no that many to worry about). Which, if marriage is considered in the above definition, but changed to allow gay people (IE a marriage is a union between two people), you can see churches being upset over it.

But, if we leave that definition, and just add a new one called gay marriage, then things will be more acceptable for both sides. And it's a much less giant step to force upon the religious.

I'm just really sick of people saying that gay marriage is a sin against god, if you want to look at it another way, so is gluttony, so is a lot of things in american and canadian society that are accepted. And again, if properly defined, gay marriage won't be a sin against god, because gay people be getting married, they'll be getting gay marriage.

I don't believe in god, and even most who do admit that we can't ever know God's plan (at least until we die).

Therefore, a better conservative/current definition of marriage would be A union between man and woman in the eyes of their society. That's why I plan to get married. The relationship between my fiance and I is most parsimoniously described as a marriage. If I say "my husband" people and bureacracies will know what I'm talking about, and they will make many correct assumptions about he and I. But because not every love/longterm/household-creating relationship is heterosexual and/or monogamous, it is unfair to restrict the legal and social shortcut of marrying to monogamous heterosexuals only.

The definition of marriage should be : A legal union between adults, or, as my sister said in her wedding vows, the "family of choice".

So, yes, Tesify, I agree with you that civil unions should be good enough for everybody and marriages only the realm of religions...

But "civil union" or "domestic partnership" is simply too awkward a phrase. I'm not sure how willing I am to lose the term "husband" as a shorthand to refer to the man I'm unionized with, but I know I'm unwilling to lose the term "spouse."

We've had this general discussion at least three times on this board, and the conclusions have ranged from "everybody should get civil unions" to "civil unions are a poor second cousin that homosexuals should not be relegated to." To give an additional dimension to this discussion, I'd like to call for suggestions for neat, short, pleasing words for civil unions and for civil spouses.

The problem with civil unions is that you end up with the idea of "seperate but equal." It doesn't work. It would be a step in the right direction, though.

What I'm saying is yes civil unions.

But call it gay marriage, because gay marriage as it's own term, doesn't mean union in god's eyes and in gods word and etc.

because fairly, and I gotta ask, would having a seperate union that is called gay marriage wrong to those using it? Do most people who want marriage think that calling it gay marriage is still to seperate? I mean, really it's the closest thing you can get without upsetting as many conservatives. Yes their will be hardliners about it, and their will be hardliners who want the whole thing changed for them, but this is the best choice that manages to get both sides mostly what they want.

I keep reading that public opinion in the US is split about evenly between people who support gay marriage, people who support separate civil unions, and people who don't even want to see gays kissing in public.

The only reason the rabid anti-gay lobbies have managed to dominate the politics is because the "marriage" and "civil union" people can't come to an agreement. If a politician says he supports gay marriage, the civil union people get iffy, but if he says he supports civil unions, the marriage people yell discrimination and hypocrisy. (The full marriage people being the most strongly represented politically, in gay groups)

I don't quite understand how people whose union does not qualify to be blessed by any given religious institution are 'less equal'.

Are people who don't recieve some religious sacrament 'less equal' than those who do?

Jane is baptised into the Church of Bob. Jenny isn't. Is Jenny less of a person than Jane, in the eyes of society? No. It's mainly only in the specific religious community that bias is held either way. Legally, it's only the birth certificate, not the christening certificate that counts in the wider community.

Religious sacraments are bestowed, at the descretion of the institution, on people who more or less strictly comply with the statutes of the religion.

I believe that people are prone to make up all kinds of zany religions, and as long as they don't hurt anyone (who is not willing to be hurt) , they have a right to their beliefs. And exclusion of people with different beliefs is part of that right.

If a religion only allows left-handed people to marry, would the fact that my marriage is not recognised by that faith make me 'less equal'?

It is almost universal for each religion to lay claim to being the One True Faith, (anyone who follows another 'false' religion is doomed to burn in hell, usually) so any union not properly sanctified by their church, no matter how dodgy and minor their sect, can be considered null in the eyes of their religion.

A civil union binds couples legally and in the eyes of society, generically speaking. If a religion does not recognise and bless the union, the religious congregation might view the union as 'less equal', but that's religious bias. Religion is irrational, so religion does not have to make sense or be fair.

The same goes for christening/baptism, communion, confession, and any number of sacraments of religions I am not familiar with.

Some people get their houses blessed after signing the purchase agreement. Does that make the contract more legitimate? I have a licence that allows me to drive a car - it's a legal document and quite a milestone in my life, but I've never heard of anyone having a celebrant bless theirs it to make it proper.

And, of course, there's the issue of Charles marrying his long-time love, Camilla. The church wouldn't marry them, but the state would. Then the church blessed them, once they had repented of their sins in the eyes of the church of course. Yay for them. Now, are they less married because it wasn't the whole in-the-cathederal, boofy dress, eighteen bridesmaids, hundred-doves fiasco? If it had been in the church, people would have been outraged because Charles and Camilla don't qualify for the sacrament of marriage under the rules of the church. But even if the church had changed it's rules to allow it, there would still be people shaking their heads over the 'wrongness' of it all - and that bias applies to gay couples as well.

You can change the law, you can change the church, but people will still believe what they believe. If change in their church goes far enough, they will form a new, scarier, and now with extra homophibia! church of their own.

Personally, I'm not going to be upset if my marriage is not recognised by the Church of Left-handed Lesbians. I hope that Left-handed Lesbain couples will cope with other churches not recognising their ceremonies as binding, but as long as all citizens have to accept that the civil union contract is legally binding for all but spiritual purposes, what's the problem?

If you just replace all references in laws from marrige to civil union that is fine.

But what some civil union people want is that heterosexuals are married before the state and homosexuals are civilly united before the state.

And this is just awkward and against precedents. For instance the catholic church does not divorces and thus not remarrying of divorced people but the state does. So marrige rules by the state are already different from marrige rules by churches.

And IMO the consrvatives might shoot into their own foot with tieing church marrige to state marrige. That makes it seem like they think that what god accepts depends on what the state accepts.

I think that they want to make it seem that the what the state accepts depends on what the church accepts. At least, politicians like Tom Delay (as discussed in Kea's constitutional crisis thread) are campaigning for (his) religion to dictate law.

One problem with your whole argument, Testify. A marriage is not necessarily a union in the eyes of God. Two atheists can get married in a registry office.

There is also the underlying assumption:
that your understanding of God and what He wants is the correct version. Seeing as how there are 90 bazillion religions, cults, sects and etc., all equally convinced that they are the only right Way, and everyone else is at least misguided, and more likely heretical or worse, that's not terribly convincing. And, as caffiene has pointed out, if marriage is only determined by God's Law, how, then, can non-believers get married legitimately? And if they can get married without regard to God's Law, why not homosexual marriage? Or does that lead inexorably to dogs and cats living together and etc.? I'm not knocking your beliefs or your faith, but why should _your_ religion determine what _I_ can do? So why not just call it "marriage"? We don't officially specify "childless marriage", "shotgun marriage", "marriage of convenience" or the other versions - why officially designate "gay marriage"? Heck, any definition you're going to come up with, beyond the most general, is going to run into problems with exceptions (like adult-child marriage, or 1-man, 1-woman, for instance). Again, to beat a dead horse (hey, he doesn't feel it), why should the law of the land be determined by one religion, no matter how dominant? Aren't we then ruled by our own version of sharia?
(note that the "your" here is a general "your" - not referring specifically to Testify or anyone else..)

Thats not really a hinderence. I was giving the conservative value, what they believe, my whole point of this is that gay marriage is not religious, and shouldn't be seen as religious because it's another groups beliefs that the churches should have any say on.

The thing is though, two aethiests can get married in a registry office, but thats how most marriages happen, you see most conservatives consider marriage to be a religous ideal, and it has been till now. Most conservatives wouldn't march to get rid of aethists being able to get married, because yes it's civil.

And that's where I'm coming from, I wonder why some people can understand two aetheists getting married civily, but can't take two gay people getting a civil marriage. Because that's what it is. And seperate? I have got to say that this is as close as you can get in these times, with some ideas and people out there it is best to find a middle ground, and maybe one day change the definition of marriage when that idea is more accepted. now isn't the time.

The reason mr. toad that I want gay marriage as it's own marriage and own term, is because the country is christian, even aetheists like myself have plenty of christian morals, not all but some. Because this country is christian, and i do agree with you, but I suggest gay marriage as a seperate option now because people will tolerate seperate but equal, and it's a step in the right direction.

And mr. toad ou must remember that what you said applies both ways, why should liberals and gay people force this idea on them when they can't accept it? in all honesty, they don't all understand gay marriage, and they feel the same pressure that gay people do (though there reason is a little dumb at times) All I'm looking for is a middle ground where both conservatives (and most honest conservatives do support this in canada) and liberals can have the civil union, and so we can start to push towards a better definition of marriage, because people won't accept it now, and thats alright, they have a right to, we just have to wait for more people to understand.

Legally, the Civil Unions that gay couples can get in Vermont confer some, but not all of the legal benefits of marriage. (I don't know which ones.)

It's a step in the right direction, but a lot of gays don't want to settle for Vermont-style Civil Unions, not just because it's called a "Civil Union" instead of "Marriage", but because the law continues to deny them some things that married couples get - I dunno, I'm guessing here - like inheritance rights.

On the other side, it sounds like Canada's conservatives are by and large pretty reasonable. Glad some countries can do this debate sanely. But the ones in the US don't want any state recognition of gay couples whatsoever. Not marriage, not partial-benefit Civil Union, not even a meaningless piece of paper. They say it would just be "marriage by another name." Pleading that the state and religion should be separate, and that the state should just give everybody Civil Unions and leave Marriage up to religious institutions, does not work with these guys. They think that keeping religion out of the state is discrimination against them.

Well teh guy running the conservative party strikes me as a little more right then the people he represents, and I'm talking about people I know that are christian and believe in things. Harper, he's a little too conservative for me, he;s not bad but i don't like the way he goes around, because he sounds like any idiot on the street who doesn't know the situation well.

And sorry to say this, but someone has too, maybe gay people have to swallow their pride and accept some form of gay marriage, whether it's what they want or not, because the although it would be nice, teh government can't bow to their every whim and just completly accept the idea, and if the government would opt for civil union called gay marriage, then it's possible for to continue. Remember, rome wans't built in a day.

I'm not sure I would agree that the US should be considered a "Christian" country - although I realize that is very likely a minority viewpoint. My understanding of the original debates is that they ended up more or less aiming for the US as a "religious and tolerant" country rather than as a "Christian but willing to put up with other religions" country. However, it's probably not going to be too productive to bicker and argue about who killed who on this issue.

well, sure, but that argument could apply (and has) to anything people are uncomfortable with. It was only a few decades ago that black-white marriage or yellow-white marriage was grounds for displeasure and even physical violence. Still is, in some spots. All this biblical justification is (in my opinion) pretty much window dressing. After all, the people doing it are carefully picking and choosing which of God's Rules to apply, as has been repeatedly pointed out.


That's a hard argument to make - that whole "separate-but-equal/wait for acceptance" one. Talk to some of the 50-80 year-old black folks you know, and ask them how they feel about it. My feeling is that inertia is so powerful that you have to kick a little to get things done. It's like driving - some people will be nice and let you in, but a lot of the time, you've got to cross your fingers, pray and go; if you don't help them do the decent thing, many people won't be bothered to...

Hey MrToad, in your last post in this thread you mistakenly attributed quotes to caffeine when it was actually Testify who said them.